Trump, Putin and Zelensky: Who Wins the Ukraine War
Last Friday night, President Trump waived the toughest sanctions Congress has ever passed against Russia. The Senate passed them eighty six to eleven. They were two days from taking effect.
Today we cover three things. Who is lying to who in this war right now. What Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky each win and lose by keeping it going. And what President Trump gets out of all of it, and where he went off track.
The Black and White Version.
Most people already have the quick read on this war. Zelensky loses territory. Russia loses men by the hundreds of thousands. Trump loses elections if gas prices keep climbing. That is the black and white version, and none of it is wrong.
It is just not the whole picture. Each of these three men is getting something out of this war and paying for something at the same time. And in the last two weeks, all three have said things that do not hold up next to the record.
Start with what happened this month, because it moved fast.
The Law That Got Waived.
Back in September, Congress passed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act. Senator Graham pushed it for years and died before it passed. The President signed it into law.
The law put one hundred percent tariffs on the biggest buyers of Russian oil and gas. That means China, India and Turkey. It put five hundred percent tariffs on Russian goods. Those tariffs were set to start on a Sunday.
On the Friday before, the President signed an executive order waiving them. He certified to Congress that the waiver was in the national interest. The waiver has no end date. It stays until the administration decides otherwise.
Republicans did not stay quiet. Senator Thom Tillis called it beyond irresponsible and said the administration was capitulating to a Russian dictator. Senator John Cornyn wrote that Lindsey would be appalled.
The President answered on Truth Social. He said he did not want to do anything that would drive Russia away from the bargaining table. He said he could sign it later, or any time he wants.
The problem with that line is simple. The law is already signed. It is on the books. What the President can do later is lift his own waiver. Calling that signing it later makes it sound like the pressure is still coming. On paper, it already came, and he set it aside.
The Diesel Deal.
The waiver did not come out of nowhere. Days earlier, the President announced a deal for Russia to send diesel to world markets, including the United States. The idea is to bring fuel prices down. The national average for gas sits around four dollars and twenty nine cents a gallon right now, according to AAA. Farmers and truckers feel diesel first.
Under the deal, Russia agreed to release about three hundred thousand metric tons of diesel right away and another five hundred thousand in November. The Treasury Department issued a license allowing those sales through April of next year.
Then on Sunday morning, Energy Secretary Chris Wright went on ABC and said Russia exports zero diesel today. He called the deal a carrot to end the war, not an economic lifeline for Russia.
The Kremlin tells a different story. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russian diesel had already started reaching world markets. Shipping data from LSEG shows loadings out of the Baltic port of Primorsk starting October fourteenth. One tanker with about forty thousand tons of diesel left for Morocco. Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak called the deal a positive signal for our economy. He said Russia wants its diesel exports back to three and a half million tons a month by the end of the year.
Look at what the deal did for Russia. Through September, Moscow's own diesel export ban kept its fuel at home because its refineries could not make enough. Bloomberg reported that Russian fuel exports fell to a seven year low in early October. Then the deal came, the ban was eased on October tenth, and the tankers started loading. An American license turned a Russian shortage into a Russian export.
In fairness to Secretary Wright, Russia had banned its own diesel exports for weeks because Ukrainian drones knocked out so many of its refineries. Zero was close to true before the deal. It is not true now. When the Russian government's own numbers contradict an American cabinet secretary, somebody is spinning.
Europe Plays Both Sides Too.
Before anyone decides the Europeans are the good guys in this, look at their side of the ledger.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said this weekend that Europe has given Russia more money than it has given Ukraine. For one year at least, he is right. In twenty twenty four, the European Union paid Russia about twenty one point nine billion euros for oil, gas and coal. It sent Ukraine about eighteen point seven billion euros in financial aid that same year, according to the Finnish research group CREA.
It has not stopped. In the first six months of this year, one hundred forty liquefied natural gas cargoes left Russia's Yamal plant in the Arctic. One hundred thirty six of them went to Europe. France took fifty one. Belgium took thirty seven. Spain took thirty four. Europe paid an estimated six billion euros for that gas, according to the German group Urgewald. The European ban on servicing Russian gas tankers does not start until January.
Bessent also said he asked European allies this spring to put secondary tariffs on China and India for buying Russian oil. They refused. Two days after he said that publicly, the President waived the American tariffs on those same buyers.
What Is Really Driving Diesel.
The President's Sunday post blamed Zelensky for diesel prices. He wrote that Ukraine's refinery strikes are seriously hurting world diesel markets, including in the United States, and that farmers, ranchers and businesses are suffering.
Ukraine's strikes do take Russian fuel off the market. But the bigger squeeze is the war with Iran. Before that war, shipping a barrel of American crude to Asia cost three to six dollars. It now costs about thirty eight, according to shipping data reported by Marketplace. One supertanker run from the Gulf Coast to China can cost up to seventy nine million dollars. Attacks on ships and war insurance have choked traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Asian refineries cannot make money at those freight costs, so some cut back, and that pushes diesel up everywhere.
Sky News correspondent Stuart Ramsay put it plainly last week. Most analysts say the war in Iran, not Ukraine, is the real problem for diesel.
The Pressure Campaign on Kyiv.
While Russia got a waiver and a diesel deal, Ukraine got pressure.
The White House demanded Ukraine stop hitting Russian oil refineries. Ukrainian officials say Washington warned it would restrict intelligence sharing if the strikes continued. Then it did. Missile warnings that Ukraine counts on to protect its cities had gaps. Washington blamed the weather. A European official questioned that.
On October thirteenth, the President said the United States had not stopped providing intelligence. This weekend, Zelensky told Meet the Press the sharing had been blocked for some period of time and was now working again.
The same week, SpaceX capped the speed on Starshield, the military version of Starlink that Ukraine runs its drones and front line communications on. Zelensky said it slowed some systems so badly that Ukraine could not intercept jet powered Shahed drones aimed at civilians. Elon Musk said the system is owned by the government and the President makes the call. The Telegraph, citing four sources, reported Musk proposed the slowdown and the President agreed. Both men have denied being responsible. Service has since been restored.
And on October tenth, standing at the White House, the President said it was time for Ukraine to get a new president.
The Missiles Already Paid For.
Then there are the Patriots.
Patriot interceptors are the only thing Ukraine has that reliably stops Russian ballistic missiles. Under a NATO program called the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, European allies pay the United States for American weapons that go to Ukraine. These are not gifts from American taxpayers. They are paid orders.
Zelensky told Bloomberg the United States approved only part of the Patriot order. He said Ukraine now gets about twelve interceptors a month, roughly a quarter of what came under the Biden administration. He said he offered a trade. Ukraine would stop hitting Russian diesel if Washington sent missiles to protect Ukrainian power plants. His words were that they just want us to stop attacking diesel. Washington has not confirmed or explained the numbers.
Now the other side, and it is real. The war with Iran burned through American interceptors. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates the United States used about sixty five percent of its pre war Patriot stock, leaving fewer than one thousand. A new one can take three to five years to build. Holding back missiles for our own defense makes sense.
Except the President said in August that America has far more munitions than anyone in the world, and far more than we need. Both of those cannot be true at the same time. Either the cupboard is low and Ukraine waits in line, or there is plenty and the paid order is being held as leverage.
The Summit Without Ukraine.
And then Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported Putin proposed a three way summit with President Trump and China's Xi Jinping. The timing would be the Asia Pacific summit in Shenzhen, China, November eighteenth and nineteenth. Zelensky would not be in the room. Neither would the Europeans.
According to the Journal's sources, Putin wants a deal on terms that favor Moscow, and he sees the format as a new Yalta. Yalta was nineteen forty five, when Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin sat down and decided the borders of Eastern Europe. The people who lived there were not asked. Stalin got half a continent.
A senior administration official said the President could be receptive. Beijing signaled it would not object.
The Lies That Did Not Need Telling.
There is one more piece to who is lying, and it runs the other way.
For three years, stories have circulated about Zelensky's wife, Olena Zelenska, going on shopping sprees. A one point one million dollar Cartier spree in New York. A four and a half million euro Bugatti. Those stories spread fast.
They were checked. The Cartier story traced back to a fake Instagram post by a supposed store employee. The Bugatti came from a deepfake video on a fake French news site. Fact checkers tied both to Russian influence operations.
Russia did not need to make those up. The real corruption around Zelensky is bad enough, and that is coming up. It also shows how this war is being fought. Moscow spends money inventing scandals about Kyiv, and every one that gets debunked makes the real ones easier to wave away.
Putin's Ledger, The Gains.
Start with what Putin gets out of keeping this war going.
He holds land. Russia controls about nineteen percent of Ukraine, according to DeepState mapping, counting Crimea and the parts of the Donbas taken in twenty fourteen. That is forty five thousand square miles. About twelve percent of Ukraine has been taken since the full invasion in February twenty twenty two.
He gets time. Every month he does not agree to stop, Washington offers him something new. This month it was a waived sanctions law, a diesel deal with an American license, and now the chance at a summit where Ukraine is not invited. Waiting has paid.
And he keeps power at home. A war gives a strongman an excuse for every shortage and every crackdown. Ending it means bringing a huge army home to an economy that has been rebuilt around making weapons.
Putin's Ledger, The Cost in Men.
Now the other side of that ledger, and it is long.
Western officials told The Telegraph in September that Russia has taken about one million four hundred thousand casualties. That counts killed and wounded. About five hundred thousand of them are dead. Dutch intelligence put permanent losses at about one point two million. The independent Russian outlets Meduza and Mediazona have confirmed three hundred fifty two thousand deaths by name. Depending on the source, Russian dead run from about three hundred fifty thousand to half a million.
For all of that, the front has barely moved. Over the past year, Russia gained about seven hundred ninety five square miles. That is about three tenths of one percent of Ukraine. In the last month it gained four square miles.
Putin's Ledger, The Cost at Home.
The Russian economy is paying too.
In twenty twenty four, Russia's central bank pushed its key interest rate to twenty one percent to fight war driven inflation. It has come down to fourteen percent, which is still punishing for any business that needs a loan. The central bank expects inflation of six to seven percent this year.
The budget is bleeding. Russia's own government now projects a twenty twenty six deficit of seven point three trillion rubles, about eighty eight billion dollars. That is nearly double what it planned. Defense spending next year is set to hit a record, more than a third of everything the Russian government spends.
And this summer, Ukrainian drones hit Russian refineries so hard that almost every one of Russia's eighty three regions reported gasoline shortages or supply problems, according to CNN. Crimea banned fuel sales to ordinary people. Stations rationed what customers could buy. Black market sellers in Irkutsk charged about four times the national price. Russia, one of the biggest oil producers on earth, started buying gasoline from India.
The economy has not collapsed, and that matters. Russia's central bank says the economy is still growing at a moderate pace. It cut rates from that peak because inflation is cooling. Oil and gas money still comes in from China, India and Turkey. Putin can keep paying for this war for a while. What he cannot do is pay for it and build anything else at the same time.
Putin's Ledger, The Cost in Neighbors.
Putin said he invaded partly to keep NATO away from Russia's border. The war did the opposite.
Finland joined NATO in April twenty twenty three. Sweden followed in March twenty twenty four. Both countries had stayed neutral for generations. Finland alone shares about eight hundred thirty miles of border with Russia. Putin more than doubled Russia's land border with NATO and handed the alliance two of the best equipped militaries in northern Europe.
Putin's Ledger, The Cost to His Name.
Then there is business, and this one lasts longer than any war.
In April twenty twenty three, Putin signed a decree letting the state take over the assets of companies from unfriendly countries. That July, Russia seized the local operations of France's Danone and Denmark's Carlsberg. The yogurt maker was handed to Yakub Zakriev, the agriculture minister of Chechnya and the nephew of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. Carlsberg's brewery went to a Putin ally. Carlsberg said it happened without its knowledge or approval.
Every boardroom in the world watched that. A company can spend thirty years building a business in Russia and lose it with one signature. The only countries still lining up to deal with Moscow are the ones that need its oil and gas, and they bargain hard because they know Russia has nowhere else to sell.
Zelensky's Ledger, The Gains.
Now Zelensky.
What he gets is survival, for himself and for his country. Ukraine still exists as an independent nation, which was not a given in February twenty twenty two. Its drones are now hitting deep inside Russia. In one night this past weekend, Russia said it shot down one thousand fifteen Ukrainian drones. An oil terminal, a depot and a data center burned in Saint Petersburg.
He gets money. In May and June alone, European institutions committed nearly eleven billion euros, according to the Kiel Institute. Earlier, under President Biden, Congress approved about one hundred seventy five billion dollars in aid across several bills.
And he stays in office. Zelensky's five year term ran out in May twenty twenty four. Ukraine's constitution does not allow elections under martial law, so there has not been one. That is legal, and most Ukrainians support waiting. It also means nobody has voted on him in over seven years, and Moscow and now Washington both use that against him.
Zelensky's Ledger, The Losses.
The losses are brutal.
About a fifth of his country is occupied. Western estimates put Ukrainian military casualties between five hundred thousand and six hundred twenty five thousand killed, wounded or missing. Zelensky himself put Ukrainian deaths at fifty five thousand back in February. Former NATO commander Christopher Cavoli estimated one hundred fifty thousand. That gap is not a small one.
The power grid is getting hammered every night. Zelensky says Russia hit Ukrainian energy targets seventy six times last week alone. Zelensky said earlier this month that more than six hundred thousand people had lost electricity. Kyiv took ballistic missiles on back to back nights this weekend. And the Patriots that would stop those missiles are running low.
He has also lost the White House. The President says he is not a big fan, says Zelensky does not want to end the war and probably never did, and says Ukraine needs a new president.
Zelensky's Ledger, When the Shooting Stops.
Whenever this war ends, Zelensky faces a bill of his own. Once martial law is lifted, Ukraine has to hold elections. He will run on keeping the country alive. His opponents will run on the land that was lost, the men who did not come home, and the people around him now facing prosecutors. Ending the war on bad terms could cost him his office. Keeping it going keeps the election off the calendar.
Zelensky's Ledger, Hands Not Clean.
And then there is the corruption.
In November twenty twenty five, Ukraine's National Anti Corruption Bureau went public with an investigation it called Operation Midas. Prosecutors say it uncovered a roughly one hundred million dollar kickback scheme at Energoatom, the state nuclear power company. The man accused of running it is Timur Mindich, a former business partner of Zelensky's from his entertainment company days. Mindich denies it. He also left the country for Israel.
Zelensky's chief of staff and closest aide, Andriy Yermak, resigned after investigators searched his home. In May, prosecutors took Yermak to court. They say he funneled about ten and a half million dollars into a luxury housing complex outside Kyiv, and that the money may have come out of the Energoatom scheme. Yermak calls the suspicion unfounded.
The head of the anti corruption bureau has said Zelensky himself is not under investigation. But the people closest to him are.
And go back one more year. In July twenty twenty five, Zelensky signed a law that stripped the independence from that same anti corruption bureau and put it under the prosecutor general, who answers to the president. He said it was to root out Russian influence. Thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets in the biggest protests since the invasion. The European Union froze one point seven billion dollars in aid. Zelensky reversed the law within days. The agency he tried to rein in is the one that later raided his chief of staff.
A man fighting for his country's life can still have dirty hands around him.
Trump's Ledger, The Gains.
That leaves President Trump.
What he gets out of this is clear enough. Lower fuel prices before the midterms. Early voting is already underway in several states, and Election Day is November third. Gas above four dollars a gallon is a problem for any president's party. A diesel deal that moves the price even a little is worth something on a ballot.
He gets the peacemaker story. He has brokered ceasefires in other places, and he wants this one on the list.
Trump's Ledger, The Iran Card.
There is one more thing the President wants from Moscow, and he said it out loud on Sunday.
He wrote that Russia is doing very little, if anything, to help Iran compared with what it could be doing, and that he wants to keep it that way. With American forces still tangled up in the Iran war, keeping Russia on the sidelines matters. A Russia that started shipping Iran air defenses or intelligence would make that war harder and longer.
That is a real national interest. It is also a reason the President does not want to push Putin too hard on Ukraine. Moscow knows it, and it is using it.
Trump's Ledger, Europe Picks Up the Bill.
The President's pressure on Europe has worked in one big way. Europe is now paying.
The Kiel Institute, a German research group that tracks every pledge, says Europe has passed the United States in total aid to Ukraine. In the first half of this year, Europeans bought at least three billion euros' worth of American weapons for Ukraine. Through the NATO program, American stockpiles supplied more than ninety percent of what was delivered. American factories get the orders. European taxpayers get the bill.
That part of his plan worked exactly as he said it would.
Trump's Ledger, The Promises.
Now the record.
On the campaign trail, the President said he could end this war in twenty four hours. In July of twenty twenty five, he gave Putin fifty days to agree to a ceasefire or face sanctions and one hundred percent tariffs on countries buying Russian oil. Two weeks later he cut that to ten or twelve days. The deadline came on August eighth. No sanctions came with it. Instead, he announced a summit.
That summit happened on August fifteenth in Anchorage, Alaska. It ended with no agreement. Neither man took questions. The working lunch was cancelled. Afterward, the President suggested Ukraine would have to give up territory.
On Patriots, the record runs the same way. On July eighth, the President told Zelensky Ukraine could build Patriot missiles itself. On July thirty first, he walked it back and said Washington had not agreed to share the technology. In September, Zelensky said the President had made a final decision to grant the licenses. Production has still not started.
Then came the energy ceasefire. Ukraine paused its refinery strikes. Russia never honored it and kept hitting Ukraine's power grid.
Then Congress handed him the Graham Act, and he waived it. Then the diesel deal. Now Putin wants a summit with Xi to decide Ukraine's future without Ukraine there.
Every deadline passed. Every time, the next offer went to Moscow and the next demand went to Kyiv.
Trump's Ledger, The Cost.
The cost to the President is showing up.
An NBC News poll this week put his approval at thirty four percent. Rasmussen has him at forty three. Republican senators are openly criticizing his Russia policy, which almost never happens with this President.
Overseas, allies are adjusting. Zelensky says European countries are building alternatives to Starlink because they concluded the United States can cut access no matter what the contract says. Europe's own satellite network will not be ready until twenty thirty, and its cost already jumped from ten and a half billion euros to fifteen point six billion. Allies are spending money to stop depending on us.
At an IMF meeting in Bangkok this past weekend, nearly half the delegates walked out when Russia's finance minister stood up to speak. Britain, Germany, France and the Nordic and Baltic countries all left. The United States stayed in its seat. Treasury said dialogue is needed to end conflicts.
Trump's Ledger, Where He Went Off Track.
The President built his political career on common sense. Say what you mean. Do what you said. Do not let anyone push America around.
On this war, he started from a fair point. Europe was not paying its share. American taxpayers were writing checks with no end in sight. Somebody needed to force both sides to the table. That was common sense, and a lot of people agreed with him.
Somewhere along the way, the common sense turned into politics. Gas prices before an election. A peace deal to point to. A feud with a foreign leader who will not take orders.
Zelensky is not on the White House payroll. He is the elected leader of a country that was invaded. The President talks to him like a staff member and tells him to hand over land to end a war he did not start. Meanwhile the man who did start it gets a sanctions waiver, a diesel license, and an invitation to a summit about somebody else's country.
Who Comes Out Ahead, and Who Comes Out Last.
The gray version comes down to the three ledgers.
Zelensky has kept his country alive and kept the money flowing, mostly from Europe now. He has lost a fifth of his land, hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and his standing in Washington. And the people closest to him are in court over money that should have gone to keeping the lights on.
President Trump got Ukraine buying its own weapons, which is right. He is getting cheaper diesel, maybe, before an election. In return, he has handed Putin more than Putin has handed him, and his own deadlines have become a joke in Moscow. He started with common sense. He is ending up with politics.
And Putin. He holds a fifth of Ukraine. He has a waiver, a diesel deal and a shot at a new Yalta. He has also lost somewhere between three hundred fifty thousand and half a million men, gained three tenths of one percent of Ukraine in a year, run his budget nearly double its planned deficit, rationed gasoline across his own country, and told every investor on earth that their property is his whenever he wants it.
Land can change hands again. Dead soldiers do not come back. An economy built around a war has to find something else to do when the war ends. And a country that steals businesses does not get them back for a generation.
Putin loses the most. He just has not admitted it yet.
That's Everyone knows. The hard truth, the stuff nobody else will say, and the thing that keeps you going.
I'm Brian Bullock of Starborne Studios. Find me on X at Everyoneknows1. If this hits you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Subscribe. Leave a review. Come find us at brianbullockwriter.com.
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